11.1 Introduction to amsmath and mathtools

The AMS-LaTEX project commenced in 1987, and three years later AMS-LaTEX version 1.0 was released. This was the original conversion to LaTEX of the mathematical capabilities in Michael Spivak’s AMS-TEX by Frank Mittelbach and Rainer Schöpf, working as consultants to the American Mathematical Society, with assistance from Michael Downes (1958–2003) of the AMS technical staff. In 1994, further work was done with David Jones. This work was coordinated by Michael Downes, and the packages have throughout been supported and much enhanced under his direction and the patronage of the AMS.1 Initially AMS-LaTEX was a separate format, which is the reason for the separate name, but at some point, when computers got faster and faster, the functionality was moved to the package amsmath, which could be loaded into standard LaTEX, and the support for a separate format was dropped. Thus, these days speaking of AMS-LaTEX simply refers to amsmath or the AMS document classes that evolved from that project.

In 2016 the AMS passed maintenance and control of amsmath and some of its accompanying packages back to the LaTEX Project Team, because its math capabilities are a core functionality of LaTEX.